Embodiment as a Practice of Literacy: Advancing Critical Race Theory's Tenet of Experiential Knowledge

• In Event: "Countering the Violence of Abstraction": Advancing the Tools of Critical Race Studies for Educational Research

Abstract

Objectives & Research Questions
In 1997, Daniel Solórzano identified key tenets for engaging critical race theory in education. One of the major tenets is “the centrality of experiential knowledge” which posits that the lived experiences of People of Color are “critical to understanding, analyzing, practicing, and teaching its relation to racial subordination” (p. 7). In K-12 classrooms, this tenet is demonstrated through assignments such as storytelling and family histories that allow students to critically share and analyze what they and their communities have experienced. This paper is guided by the following research question: In what ways is the tenet of experiential knowledge currently utilized in classrooms, specifically within literacy instruction?

Theory
Critical literacy scholars argue that literacy should allow for people to “read the word and the world” (Freire & Macedo, 1987) in order to engage in the act of transforming oppressive systems and structures (Morrell, 2008). While critical literacy scholars argue that literacy is not merely a cognitive process, but is tied to social, cultural, and historical contexts (Lee, 2007; Nasir & Givens, 2019) -- we posit that literacy is also an embodied practice and process. This is significant given the way that racial subordination and its impacts live in our bodies and behaviors (Leary, 2005). Consequently, we draw on both critical race theory and critical literacy to argue that we must advance our current understandings of “experiential knowledge” to create classrooms where students do not just “read the world” but are also allowed to “feel” it. In doing so, we honor the work of women of color feminists (Anzaldua, 1987; Lorde, 1978; Moraga, 1981) who recognize the body and emotions as sites of knowledge that inform our multiliteracies -- how we make sense of, move through, and change the world.

Methods/Source
The authors draw from two qualitative case studies to highlight how two focal students in different high school classrooms: 1) use their embodied literacies to make meaning of their racialized and gendered experiences and 2) create new ways of being that honor their agency and allow them to authentically respond to their lived realities. Students were chosen through criterion-based purposive sampling (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) and data include curriculum artifacts, lesson plans, and student interviews.

Findings & Significance
While the centering of experiential knowledge tenet of CRT is instrumental to critical literacy development, findings illustrate that it fails to account for the way these experiences become archived in our bodies and inform our multiliterate practices. We advance this tenet of CRT by offering critical embodied literacies as a necessary framework for honoring the full spectrum of what it means to “experience” something by creating space for how this moment--historical or contemporary--makes us feel, how we make sense of and metabolize those feelings, and how those feelings not just inform our literacy practices but are in and of themselves a practice of literacy, and in line with CRT, a form of knowledge.

Authors

• Sharim Hannegan-Martinez, University of Michigan

• JC Lugo, California State University - Dominguez Hills